{"id":1062,"date":"2026-09-23T00:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2026-09-23T00:00:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:00:40","slug":"what-is-xbox-game-studios-at-this-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/?p=1062","title":{"rendered":"What Is Xbox Game Studios At This Point?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The organizational structure of Xbox has long been complex and unwieldy, and that hasn&#8217;t changed after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/all-the-major-xbox-changes-microsoft-announced-today-layoffs-halo-changing-hands-and-more\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">latest wave of changes and layoffs<\/a> as part of Xbox&#8217;s &#8220;reset.&#8221; But Microsoft&#8217;s latest reshuffling of its studios and workforce does prompt the question of what the &#8220;Xbox Game Studios&#8221; brand even is now, with apparently only a few studios left under that banner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Xbox division (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/microsoft-gaming-is-dead-to-be-replaced-by-return-to-xbox-branding-report\/1100-6539586\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">formerly named Microsoft Gaming<\/a>) consists of Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media, and Activision Blizzard, but after some rearranging, Xbox Game Studios appears to only consist of the following companies:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Coalition (Gears of War)<\/li>\n<li>inXile Entertainment (Wasteland, Clockwork Revolution)<\/li>\n<li>Playground Games (Forza Horizon, Fable)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not included is Mojang, the Minecraft studio that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/microsoft-please-dont-ruin-minecraft\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft has been leaning heavily on<\/a>&#8212; that studio now reports directly to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. <\/p>\n<figure data-wp-interactive=\"core\/image\" data-wp-context='{ \"core\": { \"image\": { \"initialized\": true } } }' class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-ref-id=\"1892435\" data-wp-on--click=\"actions.core.image.showLightbox\" style=\"cursor: zoom-in\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/XGSFamilyHERO-hero.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1892435\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Graphics like this official Xbox Game Studios image from 2019 have aged poorly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Former studios under the Xbox Game Studios brand include Rare and World&#8217;s Edge, the developer of Age of Empires, but both now fall under Activision Blizzard. And while it&#8217;s unclear if Halo Studios as an organization is now formally an Activision Blizzard entity, it&#8217;s official that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/halo-next-game-is-coming-from-an-unexpected-developer-activision\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Activision is indeed making the next Halo game<\/a>. Meanwhile, Xbox studio Obsidian Entertainment has jumped to Bethesda, and Turn 10 has merged with Playground Games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ZeniMax now has the following studios:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Bethesda Game Studios<\/li>\n<li>id Software<\/li>\n<li>Obsidian Entertainment<\/li>\n<li>MachineGames<\/li>\n<li>ZeniMax Online Studios<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Save for King (which also reports directly to Sharma), a few Call of Duty support studios, and whichever team is making the next Halo game, the major teams at Activision Blizzard consist of:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Beenox<\/li>\n<li>Blizzard Entertainment<\/li>\n<li>High Moon Studios<\/li>\n<li>Infinity Ward<\/li>\n<li>Raven Software<\/li>\n<li>Sledgehammer Games<\/li>\n<li>Rare<\/li>\n<li>Treyarch<\/li>\n<li>World&#8217;s Edge<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Technically, all of these development teams are still Xbox studios, and Xbox will continue to publish games from partners, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/hideo-kojima-doesnt-know-if-physint-will-be-xbox-exclusive\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OD and Physint from Kojima Productions<\/a>. But the state of &#8220;Xbox Game Studios&#8221; as its own publishing label is a curiosity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s not outside the realm of possibility that Microsoft is doing away with the branding altogether. Since mid-2025, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.levelup.com\/en\/news\/xbox-game-studios-vanishes-from-websitewhats-going-on-with-microsofts-first-party-strategy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Xbox website has lacked any dedicated webpages or references<\/a> to Xbox Game Studios. Contrast that with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.playstation.com\/en-us\/corporate\/playstation-studios\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PlayStation Studios<\/a>, which has its own page and lists 17 studios under Sony&#8217;s umbrella.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At its largest, Xbox Game Studios consisted of at least a dozen studios, and now the publisher has been whittled down to just a handful after shutting down or divesting from most of them. The remaining three studios, The Coalition, inXile, and Playground, are all releasing a game within the next year (Gears of War: E-Day, Clockwork Revolution, and Fable, respectively).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under Sharma&#8217;s leadership, Xbox has highlighted its plan to strengthen its brand, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/xbox-must-have-exclusive-content-ceo-says\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">exclusive content as a core part<\/a> of that initiative. But as its internal publisher shrinks and becomes deemphasized, what even makes an Xbox game an &#8220;Xbox game&#8221; anymore? Chances are that this distinction will remain hazy until Xbox finishes its brutal reset.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The organizational structure of Xbox has long been complex and unwieldy, and that hasn&#8217;t changed after the latest wave of changes and layoffs as part of Xbox&#8217;s &#8220;reset.&#8221; But Microsoft&#8217;s latest reshuffling of its studios and workforce does prompt the question of what the &#8220;Xbox Game Studios&#8221; brand even is now, with apparently only a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aimoneylab.ai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}